My Everything Corner

Having had a rain yesterday, (and it is raining now) the colors of autumn are at their richest.  Before it started pouring this morning, I had a chance to get out with my camera and take Bear for a nice long walk around our yard.  I know the rain is not a welcome thing in the middle of harvest, but it is so very nice to have the dust out of the air for a little while.  A lot of leaves came down with the rain yesterday.  I love walking in this area of my yard when the maples give themselves a shake. I've brought a few pumpkins and gourds from the garden to adorn my porch, but there must be several hundred left to clean off.  I love those colors! My garden sheds have also received the pumpkin treatment.   The  marigolds are still going strong. It looks like the middle of summer in this part of the yard.  There is still a lot of transformation to look forward to. An upside down reflection of my world. ...

With the colder than usual Spring, and the flooding at the end of June, we lost a good portion of our growing season, no less than 3 weeks is my guess.  Most of my pumpkins and gourds are well behind schedule, several weeks before they can be picked and expected to ripen.  The only thing to do is to hope that Mother Nature is feeling generous with the warm weather this Fall, and that we don't get a killing frost until at least the end of the month.  That's not what the forecast is calling for, but I really can't remember a time when the forecast has been accurate, (crossing fingers). Out of the 9 varieties of pumpkins and gourds, only the sugar pumpkins and the gremlin gourds are mature enough to pick, so we plucked off 71 of them and lined them up on our deck to sit in the sun and ripen.  It usually doesn't take long for them to slip into their orange skins once they've been fully exposed. Here are some photos of a few of the patches with my...

It's really not funny.  We had a record breaking cold, and it felt, longer than ever winter.  Went into Spring with a huge smile on my face, only to be greeted with colder than usual temperatures, and then at the end of June, record breaking rainfalls.  Now don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful that not only were my house and outbuildings relatively unaffected, but I think the majority of my gardens will recover too.  That is, providing we don't get a foot of golf ball sized hail next week.  I should also mention, that this year was the first time in my entire life that I witnessed a funnel cloud.  Yes, I had someone with me who can verify my story. So, if I'm so grateful, why do I sound so whiny?  I really thought that after surviving a winter like that, and not jumping ship, that Mother Nature would remember to take her Valium and dish out some milder, more appropriate weather.  Weather that would allow us to forgive her the all out 5 month b...